Gaza Wall Quotes

He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.

It is when darkness prevails that I sit by the window to look past all those electricity-free houses, smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine—of our incomplete story.

He acted as if he could detect in her face nothing but its external beauties of form and texture. Whereas, of course, flesh is never wholly opaque; the soul shows through the walls of its receptacle.

While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.

Though Hamas was aware that we had been building a subterranean wall equipped with sensors around the Gaza perimeter, its effectiveness at blocking the terror tunnels shocked them. The underground route through which they planned to penetrate Israel was gone.

At fifth grade, I visit the school library. On a wall by the door, a poster claims, “If you read books, you live more than one life.” Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces around me, old or young, on each forehead I read: “If you live in Gaza, you die several times.

Amnesty International reported that since the start of the second intifada Israel had destroyed 3,000 Palestinian houses in Gaza, throwing over 18,000 Palestinians onto the street. It damaged a further 15,000 houses, in addition to destroying hundreds of factories, workshops, greenhouses, wells, pumps, irrigation canals, and orchards. It uprooted 226,000 trees and

What few knew at the beginning, but many of us know now, is that this was a typical response on the part of this intensely individualistic man, who had attended Waseda in the late 1960s, at the height of the student riots in Tokyo, and joined in the violence but strictly as an independent; he refused to join any political group or faction but hurled stones at the police in his own right. Today we know Murakami as the man who went to Jerusalem to accept the Jerusalem Prize from the Israeli government and in his acceptance speech criticized the Israeli state for its military actions against civilians in Gaza, declaring to his hosts, in effect, that if they chose to bring their massive military and political power against the individuals protesting in the Gaza Strip, then, right or wrong, he would stand against them. This was his now famous declaration of the “wall and eggs” metaphor, in which powerful political systems are seen as a great stone wall, and individuals as eggs, hopelessly and rather suicidally hurling themselves against its implacable strength.

In war, setbacks often divide; successes usually unite. Guardian of the Walls—thwarting the terror tunnel network and the naval and aerial capabilities that Hamas built over many years—was our most successful operation against Hamas to date. Cumulatively, the best indicator of the success of our operations was that in the five years after Protective Edge in 2014 up to the end of 2019, the population in the Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza grew by 15 percent, compared to 9 percent in the rest of the country.3 That robust growth continued after Guardian of the Walls. Yet during that operation, in addition to Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets on our cities, we faced another ominous threat. Israel has several cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations. Normally they coexist peacefully and harmoniously. Now, in the midst of the fighting, groups of radicalized Israeli Arabs attacked their Jewish neighbors with automatic weapons, murdering them in apartment buildings and in the streets. The shooters, often an amalgam of Islamic radicals and criminal elements, were using illegal weapons rampant in Arab communities. This lawlessness was a festering sore for decades.

The town of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, like all the other towns and villages in the West Bank and the Strip, was placed under military curfew for three days. This short period was enough for the army to perform its routine devastation. Muhammad Ahmad al-Astal, who was then twenty-four years old, recalled how the soldiers burst into the house where his friends usually gathered, about ten Palestinian men in all. The soldiers took four of them to another room. He remained with three other members of the family. Two of them were taken by the soldiers to a corner of the room and beaten with rifle stocks; they were also punched, slapped and kicked. He and another family member were ordered to empty the cupboard of its contents, clothing and other household items. In his own words: ‘The soldiers called me over, slapped me on the face and told me, ‘You are Hamas’. I returned to empty the cupboard but I was called over again. This time they told me, ‘You are Islamic Jihad’, and slapped me again.’ There was a third round of abuse in which he was told, ‘You are PLO’. Another man in the room was treated in a similar way. Then they were both summoned: ‘one soldier held me by the neck and banged our heads together’. It turned out that in the next room the same abuse was taking place and then they were united with two men from the other room and ordered to stand facing the wall with their hands up in the air: ‘the soldiers gave us back our ID cards to hold up in the air and told us to remain like this’. After half an hour the older members of the family told them the soldiers had left

The most effective example of separatism is the encirclement of Gaza, trapping more than 2 million Palestinians behind high fences, under constant drone surveillance, infrequent missile attack, and largely closed borders enforced by Israel and Egypt. When Israel completed the sixty-five-kilometer high-tech barrier along the entire border with Gaza in late 2021, at a cost of US$1.11 billion, a ceremony in southern Israel took place to mark the occasion. Haaretz described the wall as “a complex engineering and technological system: the only one of its kind in the world” that required construction assistance from Europe.

Back in 2002, three years before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdraw nine thousand Jewish settlers from Gaza, Israeli historian Van Creveld predicted the vision: “[The only solution is] building a wall between us and the other side, so tall that even the birds cannot fly over it … so as to avoid any kind of friction for a long, long time in the future … We could formally finish the problem, at least in Gaza, in forty-eight hours, by getting out and building a proper wall. And then of course, if anybody tries to climb over the wall, we kill him.

A few years ago, someone daubed on the wall of the UNRWA school east of the camp a strange slogan: ‘We progress backwards.’ It had a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics, back to the beginning. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and churches. It razes our gardens and parks to the ground. It leaves us nothing for the future. Every war takes us years to recover from, and before we have recovered from it, a new war arrives. It doesn’t trigger warning sirens or send messages to your phone. It just arrives. We find ourselves suddenly in the middle of it.

As for the myth of the extended hand of peace, the documents show clearly an intransigent Israeli leadership that refused to open up negotiations over the future of post-Mandatory Palestine or consider the return of the people who had been expelled or fled. While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.

What is home: It is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted. It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photo before the walls crumbled. It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and put in a museum. It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house to ashes. It is the cafe where I watched football matches and played- Mg child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold all of these?

What is home: It is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted. It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photo before the walls crumbled. It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and put in a museum. It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house to ashes. It is the cafe where I watched football matches and played- My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold all of these?

The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City's little harbour just after four o'clock.

I watch footage of people bringing their kids to a party of sorts. Only it’s not a party, it’s a blockade. The people are here to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza. But the atmosphere is festive. Someone on the other side of these walls is going to starve to death or be operated on without proper medical equipment because this aid won’t pass,

At fifth grade, I visit the school library. On a wall by the door, a poster claims, “If you read books, you live more than one life.” Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces around me, old or young, on each forehead I read: “If you live in Gaza,    you die several times.

Here’s how weapons experts described the impact of the GBU-31, which Israel used in “several” of the air strikes investigated by the Report: The explosion creates a shock wave exerting thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch [psi]. By comparison, a shock wave of 12 psi will knock a person down; and the injury threshold is 15 pounds psi. The pressure from the explosion of a device such as the Mark-84 JDAM82 can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities and tear off limbs hundreds of feet from the blast site, according to trauma physicians. When it hits, the JDAM generates an 8,500-degree fireball, gouges a 20-foot crater as it displaces 10,000 pounds of dirt and rock and generates enough wind to knock down walls blocks away and hurl metal fragments a mile or more. There is a very great concussive effect. Damage to any human beings in the vicinity would be pretty nasty.83

For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they carried into exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom. 7 So I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour her strongholds. 8 I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod, and him who holds the scepter from Ashkelon; I will turn my hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,” says the Lord GOD.

- [ ] On July 16, Israeli naval gunboats lobbed a shell toward a group of young boys playing on the beach. Journalists assembled at the Al-Deira hotel restaurant watched in astonishment from two hundred meters away. As the boys ran from the ex­plosion for the safety of the hotel, they waved for help from the journalists. The Israeli gunners readjusted their sights to lob another shell at the boys, all members of the Fatah-aligned Bakr family that earned its keep in Gaza's fishing industry. “They are only children,” a group of reporters shouted. “In the space of forty seconds, four boys who had been playing hide-and-seek among fishermen’s shacks on the wall were dead,” wrote Peter Beaumont, a correspondent for the *Guardian* who witnessed the incident. Footage of the shelling captured by the dozens of photographers and camera people on the scene made it one of the war’s iconic moments, transforming the four Bakr boys and their failed flight to safety into a symbol of young lives cut short by Israeli violence. --- - [ ]

I watch footage of people bringing their kids to a party of sorts. Only it’s not a party, it’s a blockade. The people are here to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza. But the atmosphere is festive. Someone on the other side of these walls is going to starve to death or be operated on without proper medical equipment because this aid won’t pass, but there is something festive here. Ten years earlier, when I watch footage of settlers with folding chairs up on the hillside, viewing the bombing of Gaza as one would view a summer blockbuster, again there is a celebratory air. I am reminded of what the actor Helen Mirren said of her time in Israel in 1967: “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.

I am Israel. I never miss a chance to claim victimhood while inflicting violence. In 1947, the United Nations handed me more than half of someone else’s land. A gift I didn’t earn, from colonial powers who didn’t own it. I accepted. My neighbors objected. I called it war—and in the chaos, I began my cleansing. Over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes—some fled, yes—but many were forced out at gunpoint, their villages razed, their names erased. Then I planted pine trees over the ruins—to hide the memory. Forests where homes once stood. Parks over cemeteries. I made it green so the world wouldn’t see the black underneath. I called it “reforestation.” They called it erasure. I am Israel. I have never chosen peace—only dominance. In 1967, I launched a pre-emptive war and seized Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Sinai. I claimed it was for security. I held onto it for power. I built settlements, one by one, choking Palestinian towns. International law said it was illegal. I ignored it. My map grew. Their freedom shrank. I am Israel. I could have ended the occupation. Many times. But I always said no. In 2000, at Camp David, I offered a patchwork of disconnected enclaves surrounded by walls, checkpoints, and soldiers. I called it peace. Palestinians walked away. I called them extremists. Then I built a wall, not on my border—but deep in theirs. I called it security. They called it theft. I am Israel. I glorify militarism. I raise children to believe they are chosen. My textbooks erase Palestine. My soldiers patrol streets with rifles pointed at teenagers. My media justifies bombings. My politicians joke about flattening Gaza. I send airstrikes to refugee camps, schools, and hospitals. Then I say they were human shields. I am Israel. I elected Netanyahu. Again and again. Not once, by mistake. But knowingly. I voted for leaders who vowed to crush the Palestinians, to expand settlements, to never allow a Palestinian state. My ministers speak of “the Arabs” as a demographic threat. My settlers burn olive trees. My mobs chant “Death to Arabs.” I call it patriotism. I am Israel. I speak of democracy—but deny it to millions under my control. I rule over millions who cannot vote in the country that controls their lives. I build roads they cannot drive on. I issue permits for them to breathe, to move, to live. I bomb Gaza, then seal it off and say it’s their fault. I say I left Gaza—but I control its air, sea, and borders. I say they are free—then I starve them. I am Israel. I demand recognition—but give none in return. I demand that Palestinians accept me as a Jewish state—while refusing to even say the word “Nakba.” I ignore the homes, lands, and history of those I displaced. I hold their keys in museums, not their hands. I deny the refugees their right to return. I make laws that call them “absentees,” even when they’re just over the hill. I am Israel. I cry antisemitism—when what I fear is accountability. I call any critic a hater. I blur the line between Judaism and Zionism, using one to shield the crimes of the other. I weaponize history to excuse apartheid. I manipulate trauma to justify conquest. I say “Never again”—but let it happen to others, by my own hand. I am Israel. I will never be secure